SB 277 was passed by the California Senate and if it is passed by the Assembly Health Committee today, it will go on to a full Assembly vote and then on to the governor.

It is critically important that you contact your assembly member and the governor today to oppose SB 277!

LEGISLATIVE EDUCATION ACTION NEEDED TODAY:

1) Lookup your California Assembly Member and his/her contact information. Enter your address here: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ for your State Assembly Member. Find the location of your State Assembly Member’s district office here and stop by today if you can! http://assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers If you are registered with the NVIC Advocacy Portal, register/login at http://NVICAdvocacy.org. Click on “Check What is Happening in Your State” on the home page or “My State” on the STATE TEAMS Tab. Your personal state legislators are listed on the right side of the page. Click on them one at a time to display their contact information.

2) Ask your Assembly Member to VOTE NO on SB 277 TODAY! Use the talking points below and include the reasons why it is important to your family to have personal belief exemptions. Use the contact information from step 1 to stop by one of their district offices or their office in the capitol if you are there today. Also, call, fax, and use the web based email system. Contact them every way you can today. You don’t want to regret that you didn’t do everything you could.

3) Ask Governor Brown to VETO SB 277!It is crucial you do this ASAP. Call, email, fax AND visit! He needs to be buried in requests to VETO SB 277 from each contact method. Contact Information for Governor Brown: https://govnews.ca.gov/gov39mail/mail.php

4) Forward this email to everyone you know who cares about this issue and ask them to contact their assembly member and the governor today to OPPOSE SB 277!

requires children to risk vaccine injury, while vaccine manufacturers and doctors administering vaccines are shielded from vaccine injury liability,

discriminates against children to deny them a school-based education guaranteed by the California Constitution, and

will be excessively expensive to administer and enforce.

FACT #1: Unvaccinated school-aged children with religious and conscientious belief exemptions are not causing measles and whooping cough outbreaks in California. In 2015, California reported 136 cases of measles. Of the cases with vaccination records, 30 percent had been vaccinated. Only 18 percent of the measles cases were in school-aged children, while 55 percent were in adults.[1] [2] In 2014, out of 8,200 pediatric cases of pertussis with vaccination records reported in California, 90 percent of the children had been vaccinated. [3]

BOTTOM LINE: Despite originating in one of the most densely populated places in the country, the 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak was successfully contained and only affected 0.00035% of the state’s population. There is no public health emergency and no need to eliminate informed consent protections in California public health laws.

FACT #2: Vaccines are pharmaceutical products that carry a risk of injury or death, which can be greater for some than others. According to the Institute of Medicine, doctors cannot accurately predict who will be harmed by vaccines because of unknown biological, genetic and environmental high risk factors; [4]and the safety of the federally recommended childhood vaccine schedule has not been adequately studied. [5] Even so, 99.99 percent of children do not qualify for medical vaccine exemptions under federal guidelines. [6]

BOTTOM LINE: Parents are legally and morally responsible for the health and well-being of their children. When a medical intervention like vaccination carries an unpredictable risk of injury or death, parents of minor children must have the legal right to make informed, voluntary medical decisions for them without being coerced or punished by doctors or the state.

FACT #3: The federal government maintains that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” products and shields vaccine manufacturers and those administering vaccines from product liability and personal injury lawsuits even if the vaccine(s) could have been safer or were given negligently. Under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, since 1988 over $3 billion has been paid for vaccine injuries and deaths suffered by children and adults but vaccine manufacturers have paid none of it. [7]

BOTTOM LINE: SB277 compels children to take vaccine risks or be denied an education while drug companies and vaccine administrators remain risk-free. It gives preferential treatment to drug corporations and the medical trade while denying equal protection to children and their parents.

FACT #4: Children living in California have a constitutional right to an education and children with special needs have rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Free Appropriate Public Education Act (FAPE). SB 277 deprives children of their civil right to an education and sanctions parents making informed medical decisions for their children.

BOTTOM LINE: The California Constitution guarantees to all children a public education whether or not they have received every dose of every vaccine recommended by the government. Many parents are not able to homeschool.

FACT #5: SB 277 will incur excessive administrative and litigation costs to the state. Children requiring special education will be denied an equal education unless the state provides costly home-based tutorial support services. The state will incur costs to charge non-complying parents with truancy and criminally prosecute and imprison them. When California families penalized by SB 277 bring civil actions, the state will incur the costs to defend those lawsuits.

BOTTOM LINE: SB 277 is an expensive and unnecessary bill that will add to the state’s debt while violating children’s constitutionally guaranteed right to receive an equal education regardless of vaccination status.